Divide and Conquer: How Partisan Race Cues Polarize The Electorate

Abstract

Race has historically been the most enduring sociopolitical cleavage in American society (Myrdal 1944; Hutchings and Valentino 2004). Debates over how to address the issue of slavery nearly derailed the delicate compromise necessary for ratification of the Constitution in the eighteenth century and ultimately led to America’s deadliest war in the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, the issue of race precipitated one of the most far-reaching social movements in our nation’s history and ultimately led to the dismantling of Jim Crow racism in the South.